Registered Architect, UK, Architects Registration Board, ARB

RIBA Specialist Conservation Architect (SCA), RIBA Conservation Register

Chartered Architect, Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA

Chartered Architect, Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, RIAS

Chartered Architect, Spain. Incorporation of Architects in Asturias (Spain), COAA

PRINCE2 Foundation, Project Management

Diploma in Advanced Academic Studies, University of Strathclyde

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, FHEA

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, FRSA

Dr Cristina González-Longo RIBA SCA RIAS FHEA FRSA is a Chartered Architect in UK and Spain and RIBA Specialist Conservation Architect (SCA). She is the Founder and Director of the MSc in Architectural Design for the Conservation of Built Heritage at the Department of Architecture of the University of Strathclyde, where she has also created and is leading the Architectural Design and Conservation Research Unit (ADCRU). Her research group deals with the challenges of conserving built heritage while allowing changes to adapt historic buildings for contemporary uses, as well as with the design of new buildings to conserve the environment, which requires an interdisciplinary approach. After graduating at the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Madrid (ETSAM), Cristina spent three years in Rome with a scholarship from the Italian Government to study architectural conservation at the prestigious Specialisation School of the Sapienza University of Rome. On completion of the course, she won a government competition to conserve a twelve-century church in Spain, where she set her practice in 1996. Since, she had a central role in taking decisions concerning historic buildings of outstanding national and international importance and wide experience in leading the design, management and procurement of award-winning architectural projects. She was the project architect and resident architect of Queensberry House, a Category A Listed building, part of the new Scottish Parliament complex in Edinburgh (RIBA Stirling Prize 2005). She also designed Bowbridge Primary School in Newark, UK (RICS Sustainability Award 2009), with an innovative lamella glulam structure. She has lectured widely and extensible published, including her PhD thesis on preservation and transformation, published by Routledge (2020). She is, for the second term, the elected President of the ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) International Scientific Committee on Education and Training (CIF).

Cristina has over 25 years experience as Chartered architect both in UK and Spain working in small companies, large multinational organisations and local and central Governments. She is RIBA Specialist Conservation Architect and set up her own practice in Spain, Cristina Gonzalez-Longo Architect (CG-LA) after graduating, winning a government competion shortly after, and the company is still running, also in UK. She has also been for ten years Examiner for the Architects Registration Board (ARB) Prescribed Examination and  member of design review groups and policy advisory bodies in England and Scotland. She is currently member of the accreditation panel for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Conservation Register and Academic Adviser to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC). Her career is balanced between practice, research and education, and has had a central role in taking decisions concerning historic buildings of outstanding national importance and wide experience in leading the design, management and procurement of award winning architectural projects (both conservation and new build). After moving to the UK, she has been project and resident architect in high profile and award-winning new design and conservation projects, such as Queensberry House, a 17th century Grade A Listed Building, part of the new Scottish Parliament building (RIBA Stirling Prize 2005). She also designed Bowbridge Primary School in Newark (RICS Sustainability Award 2009). The building has an innovative lamella glulam structure and is an exemplary case study in the Building Schools for the Future and NCSL programme ‘Leading sustainable schools’.

- Complex architectural conservation projects

- New design in historic cities, buildings, monuments and archaeological
areas

- Reuse of historic buildings and monuments, including retrofitting

- Environmental design and reduction of energy consumption

- Conservation theory

- Architectural history and the transformation of buildings

- Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish architecture

- Methods, strategies and instruments used by architects over the centuries in the transformation of a place.

- Conservation, Sustainable design and construction.

- Historic Construction technologies and systems

- Historic buildings, urban infrastructure and context

- Historic cities, buildings, monuments and local identity

- The Scottish Parliament building and the development of architecture and urban design in Scotland

- Architecture and archaeology